Living lab

A living lab is a research concept. A living lab is a user-centred, open-innovation ecosystem,[1][2] often operating in a territorial context (e.g. city, agglomeration, region), integrating concurrent research and innovation processes[3] within a public-private-people partnership.[4]

The concept is based on a systematic user co-creation approach integrating research and innovation processes. These are integrated through the co-creation, exploration, experimentation and evaluation of innovative ideas, scenarios, concepts and related technological artefacts in real life use cases. Such use cases involve user communities, not only as observed subjects but also as a source of creation. This approach allows all involved stakeholders to concurrently consider both the global performance of a product or service and its potential adoption by users. This consideration may be made at the earlier stage of research and development and through all elements of the product life-cycle, from design up to recycling.[5] See also: Concurrent engineering

A living lab is not similar to a testbed as its philosophy is to turn users, from being traditionally considered as observed subjects for testing modules against requirements, into value creation in contributing to the co-creation and exploration of emerging ideas, breakthrough scenarios, innovative concepts and related artefacts. Hence, a living lab rather constitutes an experiential environment, which could be compared to the concept of experiential learning, where users are immersed in a creative social space for designing and experiencing their own future. Living labs could also be used by policy makers and users/citizens for designing, exploring, experiencing and refining new policies and regulations in real-life scenarios for evaluating their potential impacts before their implementations.[citation needed]

William J. Mitchell, Kent Larson, and Alex (Sandy) Pentland at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are credited with first exploring the concept of a Living Laboratory. They argued that a living lab represents a user-centric research methodology for sensing, prototyping, validating and refining complex solutions in multiple and evolving real life contexts. Nowadays, several living lab descriptions and definitions are available from different sources.[23][24][25][26][27][28]

In 2010, Mitchell, Larson and Pentland, formed the first US-based living labs research consortium. According to the consortium website:[29]

The convergence of globalization, changing demographics, and urbanization is transforming almost every aspect of our lives. We face new choices about where and how we work, live, travel, communicate, and maintain health. Ultimately, our societies are being transformed. MIT Living Labs brings together interdisciplinary experts to develop, deploy, and test - in actual living environments - new technologies and strategies for design that respond to this changing world. Our work spans in scale from the personal to the urban, and addresses challenges related to health, energy, and creativity.

The consortium has since been reorganized as the City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab.[30]

The term "living lab" or "living laboratory" is also used for representing a residential home research facility where the behaviour of people living in this house is observed and usage patterns are collected by researchers that are investigating methods for merging new technologies with user-centered design. In this type of living lab, users are more observed subjects than engaged in the co-creation of ideas and breakthrough scenarios. There are examples of such research facilities like PlaceLab at MIT developed by Kent Larson and Stephen Intille. [31] and ExperienceLab at Philips Research.[32]

The living lab process,[33] which integrates both user-centred research and open innovation, is based on a maturity spiral concurrently involving a multidisciplinary team in the following four main activities:

Co-creation: bring together technology push and application pull (i.e. crowdsourcing, crowdcasting) into a diversity of views, constraints and knowledge sharing that sustains the ideation of new scenarios, concepts and related artefacts.

Experimentation: implement the proper level of technological artefacts to experience live scenarios with a large number of users while collecting data which will be analysed in their context during the evaluation activity.

Evaluation: assess new ideas and innovative concepts as well as related technological artefacts in real life situations through various dimensions such as socio-ergonomic, socio-cognitive and socio-economic aspects; make observations on the potentiality of a viral adoption of new concepts and related technological artefacts through a confrontation with users' value models.

^Niitamo, V.-P.; Kulkki, S.; Eriksson, M.; Hribernik, K. A.: State-of-the-art and good practice in the field of living labs, Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising: Innovative Products and Services through Collaborative Networks, Milan, Italy, 2006, 349-357.

^European Commission Information Society and Media, Unit F4 New Infrastructure Paradigms and Experimental Facilities. Living Labs for user-driven open innovation. An overview of the Living Labs methodology, activities and achievements. January 2009.